“Provided that a character is smart enough and manipulative enough,” reads a post on tvtropes.org, “they can get the people around them to do just about anything. Sometimes this can be accomplished by the power of charisma, but other times it needs to be perpetrated through an elaborate scheme. This scheme takes into account everything that The Chessmaster (as well as the viewer) knows about the characters being manipulated, and uses it against them. The patsies in this scheme only act and respond as their own predictability dictates and all the pieces fall into place. This is the essence of the Batman Gambit, which is a storytelling device that can be used by any unusually intelligent character, be they good or evil, to achieve what they want by using their own intelligence to make sure that the most probable outcome that is beneficial to them arises.
“This trope relies heavily on Flaw Exploitation manipulating, although the term `flaw’ is used very loosely here. Sometimes the flaw is that the villains are so predictable that they’ll take the first chance they have to do something mean and underhanded. Other times, the flaw is that the heroes are so heroic that they’ll act for the greater good without even thinking about it. A particularly Genre Savvy person will recognize the fact that heroes always win — and design a plan based on the assumption that they will succeed. . . .The key to making a Batman Gambit work is by carefully guiding and manipulating the motivations of those involved, so that the 
`obvious’ course of action to them is to do what will make the gambit work and it never occurs to them to do things that would ruin the gambit. Because of the presence of this obvious failure mode, anyone who tries to pull off a Batman Gambit and fails often just ends up looking like a fool. In short, if you can say `but what if he does this?’ and that will mess up everything, then it’s a Batman Gambit.”
Our author goes on to cite characters from various genres who have used the Batman Gambit. In anime, Vegito in Dragon Ball Z, Akiyama Shinichi in Liar Game, and both Marik and Dark Bakura in Yu-Gi-Oh!; in television, The Mission: Impossible team and Doctor Who; in comics, Wolverine in Wolverine: Origins, Victor Von Doom and 
Lex Luthor pretty much all the time, Batman of course, Captain 
America in Earth X, Nick Fury in Ultimate Marvel Universe, and both Ava and Senator Roark in Sin City; in films, Palpatine/Sidious in the Star Wars Saga, General Koskov in the Bond film The Living Daylights, Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, Neal McCauley in Heat, Mary Poppins, Jason Bourne, Billy Flynn in Chicago, and Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs; and in literature, Hari Seldon in Isaac Asimov‘s Foundation series, GK Chesterton‘s Father Brown in “The Sins 
of Prince Saradine”, Sherlock Holmes, Milady de Winter in Alexandre Dumas‘ The Three Musketeers, Dantes in The Count of 
Monte Cristo, Artemis Fowl, Bene Gesserit in Frank Herbert‘s Dune, Voldemort in both Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Chauvelin in The Scarlet Pimpernel, Bram Stoker‘s Dracula, both Gandalf and Sauron in JRR Tolkien‘s The Lord of the Rings, PG Wodehouse‘s Jeeves, and (Ta-DAA) Godwin Pope in The Coup, in which “a US Vice-President engineers one of the most brilliant government ousters this troper has ever seen. He plays everybody like cards in a deck and does it with such panache that you find yourself cheering for the Magnificent Bastard.”
If you’re not flattered to among such company, check your pulse, because you must be dead. Thank you, oh anonymous wikidian!